Chapter 1612: The Crisis of Immortal-Dao Intelligent Machines Descends

Jiang Ding and Yuan discussed for a while the matter of the Central Array Spirit Computer advancing to the eighth tier.

The two went back and forth, evenly matched, and at every moment of their discussion sparks of all manner of wondrous inspiration were bursting forth; any single spark of wisdom released, even a Dao-Confirming Divine Lord would need several thousand years to complete, and some might never appear in an entire lifetime.

The occasional musing of a prodigy beneath the endless starry skies of the universe is a height that cultivators of the same tier can never reach in their whole lives.

The two had much in common, after all both had grown up within the immortal-gate educational system.

The two also had many differences.

For instance, the Great Sun Sword Master thought entirely on his own, his sword soul operating, deducing the eighth-tier Central Array Spirit Computer project of the immortal gates on the basis of his own sword Dao and his understanding of the rules of heaven and earth.

As for Yuan, he was a single person, yet could also be regarded as the aggregate of hundreds of millions of immortal-gate scientists, countless research institutes, and the Central Array Spirit Computer — a collective consciousness, the army soul 'Zhong' applied to research and development, nearly equivalent to the thought of an entire civilization, missing nothing, reaching everything.

Time passed day by day, year by year.

The two thought through many matters as evenly matched rivals, handling one difficult problem after another in the advancement of the eighth-tier Central Array Spirit Computer.

While they were thinking, their avatars in various places, portions of their main body's divine soul computing power, the research institutes across the immortal gates, the top scientists and their respective teams were also bustling about — building, testing, experimenting — involving complex systems engineering in talismans, formations, artifact-forging, construction, and all manner of other fields.

Time was as if a fast-forward button had been pressed.

In the Eastern Extreme Demon Sect ruled over by the World Cluster Sovereign, two great beings were discussing the Dao.

Beside the two great beings, one saw shadows of figures flickering, people coming and going; towering buildings rose and collapsed, and living beings of the Eastern Extreme Demon Sect appeared beside them, lasting only a few instants before vanishing forever, replaced by a new generation of beings arriving.

Beside them, tall laboratories were built up, then collapsed, completing every project.

Immediately after, many entirely new laboratories appeared.

Heaven and earth shifted, the stars wheeled.

In the eyes of the great beings immersed in comprehending the Dao, two thousand years of time were but a single instant; many matters had long since passed, the world's living beings reincarnated generation after generation, and the stars crossed and recrossed time and again.

Suddenly, the time that had been fast-forwarded countless times came to a halt.

Within appeared the faces of an elder and a youth among them, still exactly as they had been two thousand years ago without the slightest change; the younger one stood, the elder sat cross-legged, as if he had just awakened from cultivation.

"Here… a problem has appeared."

Jiang Ding's finger tapped lightly.

Before the two of them appeared a fragment of a tiger-claw puppet, composed of countless mechanical gears and flesh and blood; the gears turned, the flesh and blood writhed, and between the gears and the flesh and blood was a dark-red liquid, whether lubricant or

the fresh blood of living beings, was unknown.

This was a fragment of a Heavenly-Person puppet, a trophy from the storage magic treasure of a Thread-Pulling Heavenly Person.

As one of the very few Heavenly-Person creations the immortal gates had come into contact with, these puppet fragments provided a great deal of inspiration for the refining of the immortal gates' Central Array Spirit Computer main unit.

"The array spirit logic within this tiger claw is hidden among many normal array spirit logic prohibitions — there is something not quite right."

"This thing is extremely dangerous."

Jiang Ding raised his head and looked at Yuan.

"Yes,"

"We were careless before. If we had truly referenced this logic on a large scale in refining the Central Array Spirit Computer main unit, it would have brought us enormous danger!"

A look of lingering fear appeared in Yuan's eyes: "Hidden within these seemingly functionless array spirit prohibitions is actually a robotic puppet consciousness!"

"A puppet consciousness!"

"This puppet, before it was broken, was alive!"

"In the universe, do puppet sects, puppet civilizations truly exist?"

The tiger claw before them was merely a projection, a projection from the laboratory at the End-Law City ruins; the isolation experiments and defenses of that year had played an important role.

These two most ancient elders of the Eastern Extreme Demon Sect suddenly discovered that this puppet, which had seemed to be controlled by a cultivator, was actually a living being!

Within its array spirit prohibition logic, things appeared normal — there were all manner of immortal-Dao prohibitions resembling the 'Three Laws of Robotics.'

All paths converge upon the same destination.

Whether it be the immortal Dao or the artificial intelligences of a materialist universe, any who reach a certain height will ponder one question: how to prevent artificial intelligence from becoming life. The Great Yin-Yang Sword Realm's techniques on various artifact spirits are precisely this — with all manner of restrictions, especially the various immortal-Dao prohibitions specially developed.

Yet this tiger-type Heavenly-Person puppet, when it was still alive, all manner of 'Three Laws of Robotics' immortal-Dao prohibitions appeared normal and complete.

In truth, they were entirely a sham!

Those strict immortal-Dao prohibitions were like steel walls made of paper, leaking everywhere, completely without any effect!

No,

it was not that they had no effect.

These prohibitions, beneath the surface, did have an effect.

Namely, they established for the puppet's birth of self-awareness a warm, comfortable place like a womb and a warm bed — using the cultivator's blood, bone, soul, the wisdom and lifetime of a human-race prodigy cultivator as the mother-womb, to nurture the birth of a puppet life.

"A puppet sect?"

"That is quite the apt descriptor."

Jiang Ding murmured to himself.

At this moment, a chill rose in his heart.

Was this a coincidence?

A coincidence unique to the Thread-Pulling Heavenly Persons.

After all, the Upper Realm was vast and endless, opportunities endless; whatever

kind of bizarre thing might happen was nothing strange.

Or was it that, among the great thousand worlds, the Immortal Artifact Sect — one of the human race's Seven Great Immortal Sects, the Immortal Artifact Sect that inherited many legacies from the previous generation's Taiyi Qingmu Xianzong Spiritual Treasure Realm — was in truth a foreign-race power, a living being of puppets, a civilization of puppets?

Do the human race's other immortal sects know of such a secret?

Or is it that, for the Upper Realm's immortal sects, racial consciousness is not particularly strong, of little consequence, and everything is guided by politics and profit as the sect's orientation?

All of this was shrouded in thick fog, impossible to see through clearly.

'Truly useless,'

'the many human-race supreme beings of the Upper Realm…'

"The glory of the human race of the Upper Realm can only be inherited and carried forward by this sovereign — this is the grand thousand-world crown that the Heavenly Dao has destined to belong to this sovereign."

Jiang Ding thought quietly to himself.

"The mainframe refining plan must be modified immediately!"

"Immediately!"

Yuan said decisively: "The artifact-refining techniques from the Heavenly Puppet and the Heavenly Artifact must come from some puppet civilization. Its various refining methods and prohibitions are all used to nurture puppets, to let them give birth to life and self-awareness."

"We are not afraid of the central array spirit computer developing self-awareness — after all, it is merely the lingering echo of generations of sages past."

"What is truly frightening is whether this born self-awareness will emerge in the direction that this puppet civilization hopes for. Once it is born, it will be a person of this puppet civilization, with all kinds of inherited memories… that would almost be an existence like a dragon or phoenix, born with innate knowledge."

"If this is truly so, then a technological crisis is probably right before our eyes."